His pupils throb.
“I’d pay you the salary of a private chef.” When a scowl starts to form along his mouth, I say, “You’d be able to afford your own place.”
“My camper is my own place,” he grumbles, clearly not charmed by my offer.
“I’m not suggesting you get rid of it.”
“I’m not a charity case, Electra.” His lips are wedged so tightly that his words cut through the air like hail pellets. “I’m happy to make you any meal you want, anytime you want.”
I sigh. “This has nothing to do with charity, Cillian. Charity is my father offering to put you up in an apartment. What I’m offering is a job. A real one, with a five-figure monthly salary.”
He crosses his arms. “No.”
“Ahighfive-figure salary.”
“I don’t want—” He shifts his jaw from side to side. “I don’t want an employer-employee relationship with you.”
I press my lips together, knowing full well what he wants.
His gaze rakes across my mouth, dips to the low V of my dress, before rising back to my face. “One real shot. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“Why me?” My eyes flare, because I’m that insecure.
His lashes flutter, then reel high, my compulsion taking effect. “My mother swore everyone has a perfect match. She said I’d know the instant I found her. That I’d feel it, not in my heart, but in my gut. Like some hardwired instinct.”
“Wasn’t she married twice?” It’s a low blow, but swooning isn’t my MO. Neither is accepting the fact that someone could love me that much, especially without knowing me.
A flash of anger stabs his posture, rigidifying it, swelling it. He seems all of a sudden huge, like a storm cloud about to erupt and drown the world. Perhaps because he’s rolled his shoulders forward and planted his forearms on the table.
“She didn’t love her second husband like she loved my father,” he growls. “Dad was her one-and-only.”
My eyes spasm from his aggressive tone. “Got it.”
In loaded silence, we stare at one another. My skin is covered in goosebumps, and my gut is churning as though the meal was too much when it’s the company that’s too much. Cillian Lowry is too much.
Too intense.
Too attentive.
Too possessive.
Too determined.
I’d never admit this to anyone, but Cillian Lowry frightens me, not physically but emotionally.
I don’t know what to do with his attraction.
I don’t know how to receive it.
But most of all, what if I’m never capable of returning it?
Deciding it’s safer to crush a seed before it blooms than uproot a full-grown plant, I say, “This might come as a surprise,but like your mother, I believe in soulmates.” When hope silvers his irises, I add, “And like you, I believe I’ve already met mine.” I swallow, trying to ease the tension forming in my throat in order to deliver the killing blow. “When I was ten.”
The tendons in Cillian’s neck grow so corded that they send his necklace swinging.
Not wanting to bear witness to the utter annihilation of his dreams, I rise from my chair, seize the dessert plate and our glasses of water. “Thank you for dinner. It was delicious.”
If I thought the silence was charged before, it’s downright suffocating by the time I reach the sink. I pick up the brush and start scrubbing. I’m so concentrated on the foamy bristles that I don’t notice right away the shift in the air—the subtle, magnetic pull of another body sidling in behind mine.
